


Ne Me Quitte Pas

by Fixy



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Discussions of death, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, angst angst angst, but it’ll be okay trust me, carolyn is on the phone, discussions of dying, fic based on a song by Dusty Springfield, for Laura love you Laura, lots of blurd, please note that this contains a lot of what comes immediately after traumatic injuries, rated m for graphic descriptions of an injury and blood, you’ll have to read it to find out how it ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25863790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fixy/pseuds/Fixy
Summary: But if you stayI'll make you a dayLike no day has beenOr will be again-It goes as wrong as it could possibly go.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 123
Kudos: 298





	1. If You Go Away

**Author's Note:**

> For my gorgeous Laura, as part of an art trade. She sent me the most lovely Villanelle print that she created with her talented hands and brain, so I am writing her this based on a song she loves in return! Thank you so much Laura <3 everyone follow her on twitter at @villanargh !!
> 
> Go listen to If You Go Away by Dusty Springfield before/during reading this for full effect x

If you go away on this summer day

Then you might as well take the sun away

——

It starts with a bang. 

The universe. Time itself. The door of a toilet cubicle thudding shut. Even the shot of a gun. 

It all starts with a bang. 

And it ends with a fall. 

The knowledge kind. The love kind. And the fatal kind. 

——

There’s no floor beneath her feet. 

Why are they even here? They shouldn’t be here. 

But Eve insisted, a hound picking up a scent, a drive for information. Eve never stops to  _ think _ . 

Villanelle doesn’t often stop to think either, but she has been trained in certain ways that have ingrained in her a ‘stop/go’ system, a personal alarm bell for areas and situations and people. Not for emotional devastation or heartache on the horizon, no no. She walks right into those, unaware they can even touch her until she’s split open. 

But that’s not important right now. Not when life is draining from her, Eve desperately trying to put it back in. 

“It doesn’t fit.” Villanelle’s words are slurring slightly. “Stop trying.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Is Eve listening? Villanelle looks at her, her edges fuzzy, her movements manic and directed at Villanelle’s middle. She glows in the sunlight, dust motes like ghosts swirling in the rays, trapped in this space, this grey concrete space. The lighter brown tones in Eve’s hair shine, her skin shines with a light sheen of sweat, with panic, with urgency. Her hands shine, too. 

Red. Too red. 

It is Villanelle’s red, she needs that red to  _ be _ , but it’s on Eve’s hands and wrists. Eve keeps trying to put it back and although Villanelle  _ needs _ it, she knows it won’t fit. 

“It doesn’t fit.” Villanelle tries again. 

She closes her eyes, and dreams the red into blue, into blue water and blue sky and blue flavoured juice. 

——

“We should not go in there.”

Eve stops and turns to her, expression surprised. 

“Seriously?” She asks Villanelle. 

“Yes,” Villanelle says honestly, eyes darting over the building once more, “I don’t like it.”

Eve starts to look amused. 

“Are you scared?”

Villanelle rolls her eyes. 

“No,” she says, “I have a bad feeling.”

“What is this? Scooby Doo?” Eve scoffs, turning back to look at the high walls. “Bad feelings aren’t a thing, whereas this lead  _ is _ .”

Villanelle thinks of the dance hall, the fancy house, the bridge. She thinks of after, their decisions and their choices. Eve was very keen on  _ choices _ . In the end, Eve couldn’t stop chasing the bad guys, and Villanelle went with her willingly. The hunt was  _ theirs _ , and Villanelle loved anything and everything that was  _ theirs _ . 

The hunt led them everywhere. 

Including here. 

“The place is abandoned, Eve.  _ And _ half burnt to the ground.” Villanelle says, the bad feeling growing, the ‘stop’ light flashing luminous in her gut. “I doubt there is anything here.”

“We have to try.” Eve sounds determined. 

“It is likely already clean, other teams have probably swept it.”

“I don’t think so.” Eve smiles back at her confidentially and shakes her head. “I think this is new. I think we dug in the right places.”

“Okay,” Villanelle says, “but this building… it does not feel good.”

“Stay out here then,” Eve starts to walk away, “I’ll see you in like fifteen.”

Well, now she feels foolish, standing outside of an abandoned warehouse with her arms crossed tightly. And Eve is foolish, too, heading inside a place where the bad guys could still lurk, walking right through the broken front door. 

“At least let’s go in the back way?” Villanelle calls out. 

Eve turns and grins, eyes sparkling with success. 

——

The floor isn’t beneath her feet, but beneath her back. 

She thinks. 

There’s pressure there, so it must be there. 

Feeling is difficult right now. Everything is cold and hot, there and not there.

Eve is there, though. Or, here. Villanelle knows that from the slippery hand holding hers, from the heavy press against her torso. 

Villanelle laughs wetly. 

“We’ve been here before.” She says quietly, a lot of effort going into pushing the words out. “But it was the other side, that time.”

“And that was my fault too.” Eve murmurs, voice thin with fear. 

“No,” Villanelle tries to shake her head, “not your fault.”

Eve breathes out shakily and meets Villanelle’s eyes. 

“Well, okay, this time is your fault.” Villanelle admits. 

Eve gasps a laugh, then looks appalled at the laugh, then looks scared all over again. 

“How can you joke right now?”

“Who says I’m joking?” Villanelle coughs, and it’s wet, and it hurts. “This  _ is _ your fault.”

“Jesus, don‘t- I know, I know.” 

Eve might be crying. 

Villanelle can’t see her in her entirety anymore, with her scratched edges and blurred skin, a photo filter with the film grain effect on high, but she thinks Eve might be crying. 

“Don’t cry.” Villanelle says. She tries to squeeze the hand in hers, manages it weakly, feels the returning powerful squeeze.

“It’s not. But it will be.” Eve sounds like she’s trying to steady her breath, and the pressure on her side doubles down. “You’ll be okay.”

“Oh,” Villanelle says with a soft chuckle, “no, I won’t.”

“You will.” Eve insists, frustration and panic woven together. 

“I won’t,” Villanelle breathes, “but it  _ is _ okay. You’ll be okay. You always are.”

“Don’t say that shit,” Eve‘s loud voice echoes in the empty room, “I don’t want to hear it! You’ll be okay, you  _ will _ be okay, it’s okay, it’ll be okay.”

Eve is trailing off into a frenzied mumble, and Villanelle blinks to clear her vision but her eyes don’t open again, won’t open again, despite her effort. 

“No, don’t go to sleep,” Eve begs, “stay with me.”

“There is a giant piece of metal going right through my middle.” Villanelle mumbles with a smile. “I have no choice but to stay.”

“Ass.” Eve laughs, and Villanelle can hear the tears in her voice. “Just… don’t go away, Vil, please, stay.”

——

The place is decrepit. 

Concrete flooring and walls with wooden beams and a wooden upper floor, a large mezzanine that wraps around the entire inside with a large gap in the middle, allowing those on the mezzanine to look all the way down, and those on the ground floor to look up at the high ceiling. There are wooden beams there too, purely decorative to give the place a modern industrial feel. 

Villanelle is sure it was a stylish place when in use, before it was set on fire. 

All of the edges to the wooden areas are blackened and there are huge piles of ash covering the floor, mixed with broken beams and glass from the high windows. There’s burnt furniture too, and great hulking pieces of metal that Villanelle assumes came from the ceiling panels, corrugated and snapped and sharp. 

“This place is a tetanus shot waiting to happen.” Villanelle grumbles unhappily, picking her way carefully through the mess. Eve huffs a laugh from ahead of her, enthusiastically kicking things aside and searching.

“Look for anything like drawers or cabinets, anything people would have stored files or whatever in.”

“Yes boss.” Villanelle sighs. She stops and puts her hands on her hips, and surveys the area. She notes the dangerous looking upper area, all dilapidated and half-falling apart. The flooring attached to the right wall is missing most of the railing, while the flooring to the left has fallen from the wall completely. 

“We are not going up there.” Villanelle says, eyes back to the ground. 

“We are.” Eve argues. “But stick to down here for now.”

The filing cabinets they find at the back in a small room yield half-burnt files of no importance, and a scattered selection of papers show that Villanelle was right, someone has already searched the place. 

“Fuck!” Eve yells before coughing. The place is dusty, the air still thick with floating ash.

“I’m sorry,” Villanelle says honestly, “let’s go and you can do a little more research and I’ll make food and we’ll stay up all night working out what to do next, okay?” 

But Eve isn’t listening, jaw set as she stares upwards at the damaged mezzanine. Villanelle rolls her eyes. 

“No.”

“We’re going up there.” 

“No!” Villanelle stresses. “It is not safe! Plus, the bottom half of the staircase is gone.”

Eve looks around herself, deep in thought. 

“We’ll drag these filing cabinets over, shove some beams on it and jump up to what’s left of the stairs.”

Villanelle stares at her. 

“Are you insane?” She deadpans.

“You literally climb up drain pipes!” Eve snaps. “This is nothing, admit it.”

“But it is not  _ safe _ .” Villanelle groans. “And we are in a better position to find the Twelve if we are actually  _ alive _ , you know?” 

The bad feeling flares, a knuckle digging into a bruise, pulling a tooth not ready to leave the gum. 

Eve shrugs. 

“I don’t care, I’m going up.”

Which means Villanelle is going up too.

——

There is no pain right now, which Villanelle knows to be a bad thing. 

Pain means feeling, and not being able to feel is not being  _ able _ to  _ feel _ . 

That bad feeling is long gone, not even replaced by some kind of vindication, because she’s on her back, pierced in half, running out of red. 

“People are on their way to help.”

Eve’s voice isn’t what it was an hour ago, fifteen minutes ago, two minutes ago. It’s quieter, muffled, why is she talking like that?

Villanelle realises it’s because that is how she’s hearing it. 

She tries to reply, opens her mouth but only coughs silently, still wet and warm. 

“No, shh,” Eve says from far away, “don’t, don’t move.”

It’s much darker now, despite the full daylight shining in from the open roof. 

“Eve,” she manages, “I think-”

“If you say anything about dying, Villanelle, I swear to god.”

Villanelle almost laughs. 

“Eve,” Villanelle starts again, slowly, “I’m sorry, I think I am going.”

“You can’t just say ‘going’ instead of ‘dying’ like it’ll make me feel any better.” Eve yells. “I don’t want to hear it!”

“But-”

“No!” Eve is definitely crying, and Villanelle is definitely dying. She sees it now, sees light where there was no light, behind her eyelids, not a heavenly glow or a hellish blaze, just bright white like hot nothingness. 

She manages, somehow, to open her eyes a little. 

Eve’s eyes are on hers, already were, and she gasps a little at Villanelle’s effort. 

“Hey,” Eve says, leaning forwards, hands apparently giving up trying to stem the lifeblood pouring from her, although maybe no longer pouring, maybe now a trickle because most of it is gone, “hey, love, can you see me?”

“Love,” Villanelle repeats softly, even smiling as she says it, “that’s new.”

“It’s not,” Eve shakes her head furiously, “it’s been there a long time. Old, for me. New to you. I’m… I’m sorry. I should have…”

“It is nice to know now.” Villanelle murmurs, attempting to squeeze Eve’s hand a little, succeeding, she guesses, when Eve mirrors it and leans even closer. “It is nice to hear it at all.”

“I thought we’d have more time.” Eve says, then she widens her eyes and shakes herself. “No. There will be more time, Jesus, what am I saying.”

“You are realising.” Villanelle mumbles, still smiling. “But it’s okay. You will be better with the next person.”

“There is no next,” Eve is definitely crying, even though she sounds angry, “there’s you, and it will always be you.”

Villanelle wonders if Eve will ever accept that she’s gone, once she’s gone. 

She closes her eyes. 

“No, no,” Eve says desperately, somewhere above her, “wait, don’t go.”

Too tired to speak. Something radiates from her middle, pounds weakly in her chest and head. 

“Vil, if you stay, I promise to make it worth it.” Eve says shakily. “I’ll give you everything. Mind, body and soul, if you want it, I swear.”

“Do  _ you _ want that?” Villanelle finds the energy to slur. 

“Of course I want that,” Eve rushes out, “I want to give you it all. I want to give you attention, take you out, hold your hand. We can go to that stupid restaurant you’ve been talking about, how’s that?”

“Not stupid.” Villanelle mumbles. It radiates in her throat now, thick with liquid that shouldn’t be there. 

“It’s £200 for a three course meal, of course it’s stupid, but we can go,” Eve pleads, “I promise. If you stay, we can have picnics and you can kiss me in the park. I promise not to head butt you like last time, I promise I’ll let it happen. I’ll kiss you too, everywhere, cheeks, nose, eyelids. You can play with my hair, do my make up, I’ll even let you buy me a new pair of shoes.”

That makes Villanelle smile. Makes her start to get upset at the thought of dying. 

“Wow.” She whispers happily, or maybe just mouths it. 

“I draw the line at a new wardrobe but I’ll consider it if you wear crocs when you’re in the house. Deal?”

So  _ not _ a deal. 

“Deal, Villanelle?” Eve insists, squeezes her hand harder. “Deal?”

“No way.” She breathes, and Eve’s chuckle sounds heavy with relief. 

“We’ll talk about it after.”

But they won’t, Villanelle knows, because there is no after. She feels the promise of  _ after _ lifting from her, or sinking below, or curling inwards, or dissolving completely. It’s somewhere, but not in her.  _ After _ doesn’t belong to her anymore. 

“If you stay, we can go on vacation. We’ll go to Jamaica and France and the island with the pigs. I want to go to Paris with you, I want to wear tourist crap in New York and get hammered in Vegas.” Eve is slipping away, but not leaving, or yes leaving, or Villanelle is leaving, Villanelle is leaving. 

Suddenly, she’s scared. 

“I don’t want to go.” She manages to whisper brokenly. The words are damp and heavy, and they hurt again, all of a sudden. “I want to stay with you.”

“Then stay,” Eve pleads, “don’t go away. Stay.”

Villanelle wants to stay. 

She wants the promises. 

She sees herself dressed in blue, surrounded by blue, Eve in blue. Is Eve still talking? There are words, but Villanelle no longer hears them, or she does but, they don’t register, they don’t work. Birds and rain and sun, Villanelle in a dress, Eve in her lap, neither here nor there, somewhere together, somewhere theirs. 

And maybe this is what  _ after _ is. Not nothingness after all, but disjointed feelings and images of something pure on repeat, a stuck CD replaying the best notes in a song that doesn’t even exist, forever and ever. The soundtrack of an afterlife. The melody of going away.

——

They sweep the mezzanine and find nothing but insects, dead birds and long-gone wood. 

“Again, let’s search again.” Eve says, and she’s strict because she’s annoyed, stern because she’s frustrated. 

“There is nothing, let’s just go.”

“Again,” Eve insists, “just once more.”

Villanelle can’t  _ not _ . 

And they find something. 

“I fucking knew it!” Eve gloats. “I knew we’d find something.” She clutches a business card in her hand, burnt but with enough information to give them something, a name and a half, part of an email address, and really, who in the Twelve has a business card? Seems like a huge oversight, a real security issue. Villanelle says as much. 

“Might not be from one of them,” Eve says, “but could be from someone they spoke to. If we find this guy, he might have information about who was here.”

Eve is right of course, often is, not always, but enough of the time. 

“Okay.” Villanelle nods, and Eve rounds on her, pointing a finger at her chest while smirking. The tip prods her sweatshirt. 

“I  _ told _ you there’d be something here.” Eve brags. “I was right, admit it, I was right.”

Her voice takes on a sing-song style that Villanelle likes, despite its intention to irritate. 

“You were right.” Villanelle shrugs. “But I am still right in saying it is dangerous up here, so please-”

The building creaks, a groan coming from the wood beneath them or the wall beside them or the roof above them, Villanelle can’t tell. 

It goes quiet again. 

“Let’s finish this second sweep first,” Eve says, having already decided. “Then we can go, okay?”

The ceiling groans. 

“That is a warning from the building, Eve.” Villanelle looks around at the shell of it anxiously. “We should get out.”

“Oh for goodness sake, Scooby,” Eve laughs, still facing her and crossing her arms, “calm down, it’s fine. See?”

And Eve kicks a beam leaning against the wall. 

Villanelle feels her heart jump into her throat in panic, but nothing happens. 

Eve laughs again, holds out her hand. 

“Come on.”

Nothing happens, and then it does. 

A huge lurching from overhead, a rumble and a snap, loud, and they look up from where they face each other to see a beam come loose. 

A second doesn’t even get the chance to pass before Villanelle is pushing Eve backwards out of the way, lunging forward herself to miss the huge piece of wood from crushing them. 

Eve thuds to the ground, landing on her lower back with a grunt of pain, Villanelle sprawled on her knees with her chest hitting the wooden boards hard. 

Wide eyes blink back at her, and Villanelle looks over her shoulder to see the piece of wood swinging from the ceiling, still somehow attached at one end to the rafters, the other end dangling a foot above the wooden flooring. 

“Holy shit,” Eve breathes heavily, “you just saved my life.”

Villanelle readies a witty retort, something about heroes and damsels on her tongue but it’s cut short. 

Another crack, even louder than the first. A bang.

“Villanelle!” Eve screams in front of her as the floor shifts behind her. A crash echoes as the rest of the beam breaks free from the roof and slams into and through the wooden floor, taking with it the boards that Villanelle half lies on until the floor is no longer beneath her because she’s being flung by the force of the boards snapping, a kid on one end of a seesaw as a boulder hits the other. 

She’s thrown backwards and down and she sees the bluest blue sky through what’s left of the ceiling, the sunlight breaking through like heaven touching the ground, and then she slams into metal, the corrugated roof from before, the sharp jagged edge. It’s all over in a second, maybe two, and she looks down to see a metal shard, painted with her blood, pointing upwards through her body, reaching for the clouds as her life begins to pool and pour. 

——

If you go away, as I know you must

There'll be nothing left in this world to trust

Just an empty room, full of empty space

Like the empty look I see on your face

Oh, I'd have been the shadow of your shadow

If it might have kept me by your side

If you go away, if you go away, if you go away

Please don't go away


	2. But if you stay

**But if you stay**

But if you stay, I'll make you a night

Like no night has been or will be again

I'll sail on your smile, I'll ride on your touch

I'll talk to your eyes, that I love so much

Then if you go, I'll understand

Leave me just enough love to hold in my hand

——

Eve had thought that her hands were clean of Villanelle’s blood. 

After Paris, after  _ that _ , she swore never again to have the woman’s life smeared across her palms and wrists, no matter how much she hated her. Or loved her. Or needed her. Whatever the reason, she would never have that much of Villanelle stain her skin in that rich and nauseating scarlet again. 

But now she sits on cold hard concrete, hands wearing blood like gloves, drenched in the stuff with iron strong in the air. How long have they been here? How long has Eve been making promises? How long since Villanelle last said anything?

Villanelle’s eyes are slipping shut again and Eve sees them roll, feels that roll mirrored in her own stomach as she realises what that means. 

“Vil?” She asks, unsurprised to find her voice still desperate and thin with fear. “You still with me?”

There’s no sound but the creaking of the wood above them and the wind howling through hollow windows. Eve leans forward, hovers her cheek an inch away from Villanelle’s slightly open mouth. 

She waits a beat. Another. Her heart is stuck in her throat. 

And then, there, the gentlest puff of air, weak but  _ there _ , present, existing.

She still has Villanelle. 

Eve clutches her hand harder, and hopes that Villanelle can feel it. 

——

Villanelle disappears from view, and Eve loses sight of what she suddenly realises has become her life. 

She can’t say anything, at first. The words are stuck in her throat, frozen in place by complete and total panic, because Villanelle had just pushed her and saved her, and is now, just… gone. 

Gone. Flung away by the force of boards flipping and cracking under the weight of one giant beam, flung back and down and out of sight.

There’s a loud thud of body against metal, and what Eve’s brain registers as a slicing sound but will not attach to any kind of thought. 

And then she can talk. 

“Villanelle?” Only a whisper at first as she pushes onto her hands and knees, tailbone ringing with pain but ignored beneath the thick layer of fear that blankets her. She starts to crawl forward. 

“Villanelle?” Louder, more panicked. “Vil?” Urgent now. 

She gets close to where the boards gave way, tentative with her movements in case anything else should shift. She gets close enough to peer down. 

Her breath leaves her. 

Villanelle is down there, splayed gently across concrete like she’s sleeping. For a moment Eve’s mind shoots to head injuries, spinal injuries, the usual from falling, until she sees the red. 

Blood spread beneath Villanelle, a slow lake, glacial but growing. So distracted is Eve, that she almost misses the tall shard of silver metal protruding from Villanelle, torn straight through her body, slightly to the side of her gut. It glints, dipped in red. 

“Oh my god.” Eve breathes, voice thin with shock. 

Her body kicks into motion. 

She’s not careful as she pushes herself to her feet and runs to the broken stairs, but she’s beyond that kind of precautionary movement. Her muscles are driven by the aching thud of her heart beat, fast and firm and she leaps down onto the filing cabinets and beams, hanging her knee but not feeling it. With another jump she’s on the floor, feet slipping with the pace as she sprint. 

Less than fifteen metres away, the gap closing quickly, but Eve’s stomach is already sinking. 

The pool of red grows wider, and Villanelle’s mouth gapes one pain. 

——

“I don’t want to go.” Villanelle whispers brokenly, voice suddenly scared, as scared as it can sound when it’s as weak as it is. “I want to stay with you.”

“Then stay,” Eve pleads, “don’t go away. Stay.”

The tear that rolls down Villanelle’s cheek has Eve choking on more of her own, the taste of saltwater thick in her throat as she swipes at her face with a hand only slightly less bloodied after rubbing it against her jeans. 

“You can’t go,” Eve whispers, pushing blonde hair back with her free hand, startling at how slick Villanelle’s pallid forehead is with sweat, “if you go… if you go, I won’t have anyone. You’re the only one I trust, Villanelle, you’re the only one I want to trust. I need you.”

Eve feels the softest grip on her fingers, Villanelle’s attempt at a response. 

“Maybe it’s selfish to bargain with you by saying I’ll be alone without you, but I will.” Eve tells her. “You’re all I have. If you go I’ll have nothing, I’ll be empty. Jesus, when did you become everything?”

She swears she sees the faintest twitch to the corners of Villanelle’s pale lips, the start of a smile, but it’s gone in an instant. 

“God, you are though.” Eve mumbles. “I honestly wish you weren’t. I never thought I’d be that person, so heavily dependent on someone else. And… I’m not, but I am? I don’t know. I just… it’s not life anymore if you’re not in it. I can get a job, or I can continue this stupid chase, or I can move, but none of it will mean anything if you’re not there to annoy me. For me to annoy. Fuck, I really love you, Villanelle. You can’t leave.”

Villanelle’s chest lifts and then she whimpers in pain at the movement. Eve places her hand carefully, carefully, over Villanelle’s heart. The softest flutter hits her palm, nowhere near what it should be. 

“Shh,” Eve hushes her, “don’t move. You can revel in this admission of love later.” Eve smiles for her, even though hazel eyes have been shut behind lids for a while now. “God, I miss your eyes already. I can’t wait to see them again. I  _ will _ see them again.” 

The wind howls again through the building and Eve looks up, half blinded by the sunlight streaming through the gaping holes in the roof, but she may as well be sat in darkness. 

“You might as well take the sun away,” Eve directs it upwards, letting the light hurt her eyes before looking back at Villanelle, dappled in rays, “if you go. I won’t feel it anymore, won’t see it. I’m sure you’re thinking I’m being dramatic right now, but fuck you, I’m serious. The sun and the birds, the rain, trees, the moon, the wind, none of it will matter anymore.” Eve sniffs through her tears. “You make it all matter.”

And then a flicker of movement, the quietest grunt of pain, like a gasp, and Villanelle’s eyes slide open. 

Eve is immediately over her again, face close. Villanelle doesn’t say anything, but tired eyes take in Eve, focus on her, drinking her in. 

Like a last look. 

Villanelle’s eyes roll back. 

They slip shut.

——

The gap closes. The distance clears. 

“Villanelle, oh fuck, Vil.”

Eve drops to her knees and ignores the blood that immediately soaks through the denim there. Her hands leap to Villanelle, straight to her middle where the blood leaks from her. 

“Don’t pull it.” Villanelle says with the ghost of a smile, and Eve almost slaps her. 

“Really?” Eve snaps, but there’s no anger in it, just panic. “Not the time.”

“Seems like the perfect time.” Villanelle’s breathing is fast and shallow, shock clearly setting in as she stares at her middle as best she can from her prone position. “Fuck.”

“Fuck.” Eve agrees, still uselessly pressing her hands around the sharp metal as if trying to block the flow of blood. “Jesus, I- I don’t know what-”

Villanelle tries to sit.

Her pained scream has Eve tearing up. 

“No, no you can’t move, you need to stay lying down.”

“Eve.” Villanelle mutters, eyes wide, breathing still rapid as colour drains from her face. “This is bad.”

The statement reminds Eve that she can’t just scoop blood back into Villanelle’s body. She rubs her palms furiously on her shirt and pulls her phone from her pocket, scrolling and dialling with frantic haste. 

“Eve, hello-”

“Carolyn,” Eve gasps, “it’s Villanelle, she’s hurt, we need- I don’t-”

“Where are you? What has happened?”

“An old warehouse east of Harlow in Essex, near the river, do you-”

“We have people everywhere.” Carolyn says, and Eve has never been more thankful for her calm and controlled tone, “it’s alright, they will find you. You need to tell me what happened.”

“We were following a lead, and- and the floor collapsed, she fell, landed on metal. Carolyn, it’s gone right through her.”

“They will be there within fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Don’t move her, keep her talking.”

“What-”

“That’s all you can do, Eve. Sit tight.” And then Carolyn is gone. 

Eve discards her phone and refocuses on Villanelle. 

“28 is a long life for an assassin.” Villanelle tries with a small smile, but she’s pale now, shivering too, and her voice is weaker. 

“Don’t even joke about it.” Eve scolds. “It’s fine, just… just keep talking to me.”

Eve watches as Villanelle stares up, the sunlight turning hazel eyes gold. 

“It hurts.” Villanelle says, voice strained. “It really hurts.”

“You’re doing so well,” Eve assures her, grabbing for her hand again and squeezing with both of hers, “they’re on their way and they’ll take you and stitch you up and it’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.”

And Villanelle laughs quietly, a sad thing, sympathetic in a way that makes Eve’s heart clench painfully. 

Villanelle’s breathing is changing. 

“I said I had a bad feeling.”

Eve laughs despite herself, but it’s heavy with panic. 

“I know, oh god I’m sorry.”

“I told you.” Villanelle’s speech has started to slur, but she’s smiling, and that’s something. 

“I know,” Eve nods, “I know, I promise I will listen next time.”

Villanelle’s eyes flicker to Eve who holds the gaze, desperately. 

“Next time?” 

She sounds doubtful. 

“Yes, next time,” Eve says firmly, squeezing her hand again before taking one back and holding once more at the wound, trying to stop the blood, like a daisy stopping a flood, “there will be a next time, obviously there will be a next time.”

“Eve,” Villanelle tries weakly, tone messy, “I’m- there’s a-”

“I know.” Eve presses useless fingers around the metal, “I know.”

She’s met with silence for the first time. 

“Vil, talk to me.” Eve commands, trying to sound direct enough to spark a response, but Villanelle only coughs. 

It sounds wet. 

Eve uses both hands to press at Villanelle’s middle. 

“It doesn’t fit,” Villanelle slurs, and Eve looks up to see her smiling woozily, looking at Eve’s hands covered in her blood, “stop trying.”

——

Villanelle stops talking. 

She stops responding to Eve with words, with looks, with barely there squeezes to her hand. 

She just lies there, pale and grey as the concrete, blood pool below her no longer spreading outwards. 

There’s so much of it. So, so much. 

It still coats Eve, coats her jeans and her shirt and her hands and wrists. It’s probably on her face, probably in her hair from leaning too close. She must be dressed in it.

She doesn’t want to wash it off, just in case… just in case. She’ll keep it for as long as she can. No scrubbing under her nails like last time, no, if it comes to it then she’ll cherish that red-turned-brown under her nails for weeks. But it won’t. It won’t come to it. It won’t. 

“Vil, please say something, or do something.” Eve begs quietly. “Move your finger? Your foot? Just… anything? Please.”

Nothing. Obviously nothing. Villanelle is unconscious now. Eve failed in keeping her awake.

Will she wake up?

_ She will, she will, she will.  _

Eve rubs furiously at her eyes before shuffling closer to Villanelle, knees near her head and hands coming to cup her jaw, to comb through her hair gently. 

“I’m going to keep talking anyway.” Eve says to the unmoving version of Villanelle she has never seen. 

“Once you’re better, we’ll take a boat trip.” Eve promises. “We’ll go to the coast and stay in a bed and breakfast, god you’ll  _ hate _ that, but I know you’ll secretly love the English seaside experience. We’ll take a boat out when the sun is high and we’ll swim in the sea, then we’ll come back to shore for fish and chips and rock candy.”

Fresh tears well up, but Eve chuckles through them. 

“We’ll drink proper cider and we’ll sunbathe. We can even build sandcastles, although I warn you now, I am very good at sandcastle building. You  _ will _ be jealous.”

Eve focuses solely on running blonde hair through her fingers. It’s soft, softer than it looks and softer than it should be with Villanelle so silent and still. 

“I understand that one day you’ll go for real, Villanelle. Hopefully after me, god, selfishly I hope it’s after me, but I… I understand that it’ll happen. But not now, okay? Don't go away now. We have so much yet to do.” Eve sighs, swallows back more tears as she traces the sharp slopes of Villanelle’s cheekbones with sticky red fingertips. “I want… I want to take you out. A date. Obviously. I mean it when I say I love you, Jesus, it’s unreal how much I love you. I fought it for so fucking long, but you can’t deny something like that really, can you. I thought- I mean, I thought maybe you could tell, but I know I’m not the clearest person.”

Eve waits for the remark, waits for Villanelle to scoff or laugh or roll her eyes. 

She doesn’t. 

“Yeah, I reckon you couldn’t tell. Sorry.” Eve sniffles. “But I do. I love you. And if you… if you could please just survive this, then I promise I’ll show you how much. Day and night. I’ll be yours.”

Is it possible for Villanelle to seem even more still than before? Eve darts a newly panicked stare over her. 

“Oh god, Villanelle? No, you’re not… you’re not-”

She hears an oncoming crunch of tires as a vehicle fast approaches the building, but it barely registers as she smooths a hand over Villanelle’s forehead, her cheeks, her chest. There’s no movement. Eve lingers her hand over her heart like before. 

There’s nothing. 

There can’t be  _ nothing _ . 

Eve feels for a beat, a flutter,  _ anything _ . 

“No, no no no,” Eve whispers desperately, “no.”

Villanelle looks… empty. Feels empty. 

And Eve starts to feel it too. She feels life leave her but instead of dying, Eve just feels  _ empty _ . Without. Lacking. Hollow.

Sudden firm but careful hands are on her shoulders, moving her away, but she can’t see. Her tears fall fast and blur her world, Villanelle’s body further away as she’s moved, and it  _ aches _ , the distance aches. 

There are people around her prone body and Eve can no longer see her, but words won’t form, she can’t call out to tell them to help or stop or-

Two people are now checking Eve but she can’t respond to them, only has eyes for where Villanelle is hidden. Hands on her face, her wrist, her back, until they’re guiding Eve to something sturdy to sit on. Suddenly there’s equipment and the air screeches with the sound of metal tearing through metal, and Eve doesn’t understand until she sees Villanelle lifted onto a stretcher, shard of metal still pierced through her middle. 

_ Don’t pull it.  _

And then Eve is upright. She’s being guided along behind the stretcher and encouraged into the back of the ambulance. It’s navy blue with no wording on the outside, a simple red siren on top attached by one of the drivers as they’re loaded in. Eve glances at the paramedics and realises they’re not dressed like your everyday heroes either, but in navy blue scrubs thrown over day clothes. 

She hears words directed at her, ‘shock’ and ‘trauma’, which can’t be true, because how can she be anything when she is empty? She has nothing left. 

Eve comes back to some kind of horrible reality when the sharp tear of Velcro pierces the already loud and buzzing air. 

She looks down to see a blood pressure metre around her wrist, then she looks up at the woman applying it. 

“Eve, can you hear me?”

She nods but ignores the next question to stare over at Villanelle, now beneath wires and hands and bent bodies. Two of the men working on Villanelle look at each other and Eve watches their faces as they mutter. 

Their expressions are concerned. Tense. Grim. One of them shakes their head. 

“Hey,” Eve barks, making the paramedic in front of her jump, “don’t stop helping her, keep helping her, keep-”

“They will,” the woman in front of her says firmly, drawing Eve’s attention back as the men over Villanelle continue to work, “I need you to talk to me, Eve. Tell me what happened so we can help her.”

“She fell from the top floor and landed on that metal.” Eve flings a hand to point at Villanelle. “She was conscious for ten, maybe fifteen minutes after.”

And then Eve bends forward, chin near her knees and hands covering her face as she blocks everyone out, blocks the questions, blocks the expressions. 

“Eve,” the woman says, “I don’t think she’ll-”

Eve blocks her out too.

——

How long has she been here?

Eve’s body has curved to fit the uncomfortable plastic chair. She may as well be part of it now, may allow it to happen if the doctor brings her the worst. 

Her face is pressed into her knee and she can still feel how puffy it is, her cheeks and eyes swollen and raw from crying and chewing her lip and crying and rubbing her face and-

She has no tears left. 

It’s been hours.  _ Hours _ . 

At least four have rolled by, stagnant in their pace as a window behind Eve gradually lost its natural late summer evening light. The fluorescent strips shine above her and make her feel studied. 

Eve refuses to leave. Why would she? Villanelle is going to be okay, she’s sure.  _ Might _ be. Could be? The somber looks from the paramedics fill her mind, the sharp commands and yelling to other staff when they arrived at the hospital. It didn’t look good. Villanelle didn’t look good. It didn’t take a genius to read the facial expressions and body language. The doctors said… yeah, it didn’t look good. 

Villanelle was probably going to- might already be- wasn’t likely that she’d- 

But Eve has this hope inside her. Like a spark, tiny and smothered but fighting. She’s always been hopeful, always determined, unable to give up on something. For fuck’s sake, that’s why they’re here, aren’t they? Eve’s inability to let go, her inability to concede. That spark never goes out, whether it’s a flicker or a roar, it’s always there and always driving her. 

So, she has hope. The tiniest amount. It won’t leave or dim. Eve has even tried to squash it, to put it out, to let her begin the process of  _ never _ getting over this.

Her body hurts. 

She twists herself in the seat until it hurts more, can’t stand the thought of her limbs going numb and feeling nothing, not when she feels nothing inside. She needs something, anything to focus on, rather than the growing emptiness that surrounds that tiny spark. 

_ I can be any shape and any colour, the more you take away from me the bigger I get.  _

Eve thinks on the riddle from her childhood. 

_ A hole. _ The answer is a hole. 

Eve feels the hole where her heart once was. 

Villanelle would call her a drama queen. 

The hole grows bigger. 

——

Someone touches her arm and she jerks. 

The pain sings in her unused joints. Was she asleep? No. Just… no longer in the room. She notes the light starting to paint the ground, turning speckled grey flooring into brighter speckled grey, the rising sun not causing much of a change. 

Eve did say, didn’t she, that the sun may as well go away if Villanelle went away, that the sun would no longer matter to Eve. 

Speckled grey versus brighter speckled grey. 

Villanelle’s impact removed. 

The touch though, on her arm. Eve looks up to see a doctor. 

She looks tired. Exhausted. She’s the one Eve had seen swoop to the stretcher when they arrived, the one who rushed alongside Villanelle and straight down a corridor, away from Eve. 

She looks tired. 

It’s been… eight hours? It’s gone from late evening to early morning judging by the dawn sun and speckled grey. Has the doctor been working all this time?

The woman has bags under her eyes, hair frizzed around her temples. The corners of her lips are… downturned. 

How is it possible for the spark of hope to shrink even further? 

Her eyes well up. Her body finds tears from somewhere. The emptiness aches. 

Eve readies herself for the end. 

“She’s alive.”

It doesn’t make sense. 

“She’s in bad shape, but she’s-”

Eve is up. Her spark ignites. 

“Where is she?”

Her voice is strong, somehow, cracked but loud, direct. 

The doctor turns to walk them down a corridor, and as Eve glides behind her she can’t understand why this woman is not  _ running _ . 

She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. 

Eve can’t control herself, the rabbit’s pace of her heartbeat or the depths she drags her breath from, it all comes as it wants to and she’s powerless against it, but she doesn’t care. She feels…

The emptiness starts to fill. 

“I must warn you,” she hears the doctor tell her, “she’s heavily medicated.”

And then the woman is pushing open a door, and there-

There she is. 

Villanelle looks small. She’s dressed in blue, the blue of the hospital, the blue of the sky under cloud white sheets. There are tubes running in and out of her all hooked up to machines that beep or whir, all quiet but all ever-present. Eve rushes, crosses the distance that was taken from her fourteen hours ago, and immediately takes Villanelle’s hand. 

It feels warm. 

Eve feels warm. 

“She’s lost a lot of blood and her injury was traumatic,” the doctor says from the foot of the bed, “she shouldn’t have survived, many wouldn’t from an injury this severe. It would be fatal to most.” 

Eve laughs, and the doctor probably stares at her but come on, Villanelle incapable of being taken down by something fatal? It’s perfect in its hilarity, it’s perfect. A fatal woman, surviving the fatal. 

“She must have had some deep reserve somewhere,” the doctor says through a smile Eve can hear without needing to look, “a reserve full of fight that she tapped into.”

Eve nods and finally turns to the doctor. 

“Thank you.” She says, voice heavy with honesty. 

The doctor smiles again. 

“She’ll be asleep for a while,” the woman tells her, “as I said, she was heavily sedated and medicated to allow for such an extensive surgery. She won’t wake anytime soon. You should go home, get some re-”

“No,” Eve says immediately. She looks back at Villanelle again, smooths her thumb across pale knuckles, “I’ll wait.”

“We are potentially talking about a day,” the doctor says patiently, “I don’t expect her to start coming around until at least-”

“Then I’ll stay.” Eve says quickly. “Tell me how the surgery went. Tell me what I’ll need to do for her after.”

The doctor answers, and Eve’s eyes don’t leave Villanelle. 

——

Villanelle wakes up seven hours later.

There’s a grunt from the bed, and Eve is immediately there, frantic, elated,  _ full _ . She takes Villanelle’s hand and watches with barely controlled joy as eyelids begin to flicker open slowly, slowly. 

“Hello Eve.” Villanelle croaks. 

It’s like fucking  _ music _ . 

Villanelle’s eyes are heavy but she smiles, gaze slowly crossing Eve’s face. 

“Hey, Vil.” Eve says back through a grin, a smile that hurts her face muscles that have been fixed in misery for almost two days. 

Villanelle eyes roll away from Eve to take in the room, then herself. She looks at her middle, looks at their joined hands. Her eyes are more focussed when she looks back at Eve. 

“You almost killed me.” She says, croak somewhat lifting, leaving behind a scratched yet happy voice. “Again.”

Eve laughs, delights in the feeling of tears on her cheeks. 

“I did,” Eve nods, “I really did. Can’t seem to get it to stick though, can I?” 

Villanelle smiles, and Eve presses the button for the nurse before gently stroking blonde hair away from soft, clean skin. 

“You promised me a boat ride.”

“You heard that?” Eve asks, chuckling softly, tears already drying. “I thought you’d passed out.”

Villanelle manages a weak smirk that has Eve’s heart fluttering, so familiar is the look. 

“I heard it all.” Villanelle murmurs. “It fought through.”

Eve bites her lip and shakes her head. 

“Oh great,” she says, playfully sarcastic, “you’ll hold those promises over me forever, won’t you.”

Villanelle nods softly and Eve laughs again, because she will make all those promises happen if given the chance, she absolutely will, a million times over. 

Eve’s hand slides down to cup Villanelle’s jaw, her thumb stroking gently at her cheekbone as she leans forward to kiss her, to kiss Villanelle finally,  _ finally- _

“Stop,” Villanelle mumbles. Eve pulls back slightly, searching Villanelle’s eyes which are now starting to sparkle again with her usual mirth. “Our first kiss will not be while my lips are this cracked. I am woefully unprepared. I need lip balm.”

Eve scoffs, and kisses her anyway.

Villanelle smiles throughout. 

——

But if you stay, I'll make you a night

Like no night has been or will be again

We'll ride on the rain, I'll ride on your touch

I'll talk to your eyes, that I love so much

Then if you go, I'll understand

Leave me just enough love to hold in my hand

If you go away, ne me quitte pas, if you go away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading pals!
> 
> Find me on twitter @fixyfics :)
> 
> If anyone would like me to post these two chapters with all of the sections in chronological order, let me know and I’ll pop it in a part three for you :)

**Author's Note:**

> Coming to learn that I have a real obsession with ‘after’ and colours...
> 
> Second part out tomorrow!
> 
> I’m back on twitter, although barely <3 @fixyfics


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